


the ghost of you

by PrinceDrew



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Let me know if you want anything tagging, Light Angst, Past Character Death, Post-Canon, Recovery, References to Canon, Zoe is not okay but that's okay because i love her, post-epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 16:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15417216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceDrew/pseuds/PrinceDrew
Summary: “Do you have any siblings?” her roommate asked part way through the movie, pouring Zoe another glass. She didn’t notice the way Zoe’s breath hitched and the way she froze.Did she still have a brother?Zoe Murphy had gone from the youngest to the only child in less than a night. As easily as that, Connor slipped away from them all like grains of sands between their fingers. But he was still ‘her brother’. Always ‘her brother’.Right?It's over two years since Connor's death. Zoe's moving on and away from home.Things are still strange without him.





	the ghost of you

**Author's Note:**

> As always, please read the tags and decide whether or not you should be reading this fic. I don't think it's as bad as I'm making it out to be, but you're the best judge of yourself.
> 
> This is a personal fic for me. Grief is not a nice thing to go through.
> 
> The title is from Of Monsters and Men's 'Little Talks'.

Zoe ended up going out of state for college.

There was a part of her that felt bad for it, guilty almost, but her parents were adamant that they were happy for her, proud of her, that she should go and chase her dreams as best as she could. Her college’s music programme was excellent, could offer up a world of connections for her, go for it honey, just go for it.

So she went for it. Applied, and got in, and graduated with the rest of her year group. Accepted her diploma with a smile on her face and cheered alongside everyone else.

After the ceremony, her mom had held her like she never wanted to do anything else.

“We’re so proud of you, sweetie,” her mom had whispered after the ceremony holding her tightly. “So, so proud. And I know he would be too.”

Evan had said the same, when he messaged later that day to congratulate her, because that’s where they stood now. People who messaged each other life updates and talked sometimes.

‘I think he’d be proud of you,’ he said, which Zoe had paused at.

‘Yeah,’ she had replied. ‘I think he would be.’

Because that’s who Connor was now. ‘He’, ‘him’, ‘your brother’. Only her nana mentioned him by name, and even then that was rare, when her parents weren’t around.

She wondered how long she would hear that phrase. How long it would be before an important day would just be an important day without the shadow of a boy - because he was a boy wasn’t he, just a boy, fuck, she was only eighteen and she was older than him, older than her older brother, what sort of sick joke was that? - hanging over it.

Her friends kept inviting her to go to parties after the ceremony. She went out for a meal with her parents instead, and none of them talked about how they were sat at a table for four.

* * *

People didn’t talk about the Connor Project anymore. Or maybe they did, in some buried forums threads, but it never trended or made headlines any more. It just sort of… fizzled out, the way things always did.

There were rumours of a documentary for a while, about the sudden implosion of The Connor Project, but her parents were very firm on not allowing any of them to even enter pre-production. At least not that recent, not that raw. Not so soon.

If it were up to Zoe, there would never be a Connor Project documentary. It was bad enough seeing it on list articles of ‘7 Online Campaigns That Went Viral (and then Completely Died Out).

But people didn’t ask Zoe. People never asked Zoe.

* * *

The summer was long and almost empty.

She got a part-time job at A la Mode to fill up her days and save up a little for college, even though her parents said again and again at she didn’t need to, especially not now when -

Well. Especially not now.

But she didn’t mind it. It was nice, especially because it allowed her to people watch at times, wonder about other people’s lives. People weren’t always nice to her, but most were amiable, and the children always referred to her as ‘Miss’, which was cute.

Some days, she went to the orchard by herself. Just to walk, or sit under a tree if she could find one. Once, she fell asleep under the tree, and when she woke up, it was at sunset, to the sounds of her phone ringing and her mom sobbing down the other end.

* * *

Her roommate at college ended up being a girl called Zulema, who played the cello and wanted to be a music teacher in high school, and was very bright, and bubbly, and maybe just a little exhausting, but that was fine.

She insisted on getting to know Zoe, bringing out some bottles of wine (which Zoe wasn’t all too fond of but alcohol was alcohol, and she wasn’t refusing) and putting on some romance film in the background, and grilling with a hundred and one different questions.

“Do you have any siblings?” she asked part way through the movie, pouring Zoe another glass. She didn’t notice the way Zoe’s breath hitched and the way she froze.

Did she still have a brother?

She had gone from the youngest to the only child in less than a night. As easily as that, Connor slipped away from them all like grains of sands between their fingers. But he was still ‘her brother’. Always ‘her brother’.

Right?

So she shrugged. Took the wine and smiled at Zulema. “What about you?” she asked her, and Zulema ended up launching into some tale about her two younger siblings back home in Rhode Island, and Zoe just ended up tuning her out.

How the fuck could she answer that?

* * *

Zoe ended up asking her mom over the phone. It was part way through her first phone call home, when she telling her mum all about Zulema, and just how giddy she was all the time, when she just blurted it out. 

“What do you tell people when they ask about your children?” she asked, half breathless, and it’s just all sort of -

All sorts of wrong, really.

Her mom was quiet for a long time. Zoe sank to the hallway floor and began to trace star shapes into the carpet with her fingers.

“I tell them that I have two children that I love very much,” her mom said at last, at length. “And if they ask for more details, I tell them all about you and how wonderful you are. It depends on the person, sweetheart. Sometimes it’s just not the right place to talk about it.”

“When is the right place?” Zoe asked her, and her mom chuckled softly.

“I’ll let you know when I find it,” she said, and that was that.

* * *

Zulema’s new friends ended up becoming Zoe’s new friends, which was nice, because whatever knack she used to have for making friends seemed to have just vanished overnight, the only person from high school she was still talking to being Evan. They were an odd group, Zulema’s friends, seemingly cobbled together just from happenstance, but they were okay. Fun to hang out with. A few of them even shared some classes with Zoe, which gave her someone to talk to.

They weren’t close to her. She wasn’t close to them. But they could talk, which was enough.

They had gone out for a meal together at some cheap diner. Charlotte and Zulema were talking with Zoe about some incident in their Music Education class while Oliver and Blaire in the corner flirted and Rebecca just sat, and picked at her food.

She didn’t even hear what was said, but then there was the clattering of chairs and then Rebecca was yelling at Blaire about something, there was a lot of swearing, and Blaire was saying “It was just a simple question -” but she was yelling over them, Zulema trying to intervene, everyone else was staring at them, and Rebecca was throwing something, she was leaving, swearing, leaving, she was gone.

And then Zoe was up, after her, because she knew that tone, knew sort of screaming and yelling, knew it all, knew it so well she’d she never forget it, could never forget, fuck, _Connor had yelled at her dad like that when he left that night_ -

“Rebecca!” she called as she burst out of the door, breathless, running up to the girl, stopping as soon as the other turned around, scowling.

“What?” she snapped. She was glaring at Zoe, and it didn’t help that Rebecca was over six foot and towered over everyone, towered over Zoe.

“Just - is everything okay?” Zoe asked, wincing and shrinking into herself. Of course it wasn’t.”

“Fuck off,” Rebecca said, still glaring. “Just - just fuck right off, okay? You just - fuck off. You wouldn’t know.”

She did know. She did, she did, she did -

“My brother killed himself,” she said, and then she felt like slapping herself, because now Rebecca was staring at her, oh god why was she staring at, please, please, the world had seen enough Zoe to last them a lifetime -

“Oh,” Rebecca said quietly, blinking. “Oh. You’re that Zoe Murphy.”

“...yeah.” She nodded. Wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m that Zoe Murphy.”

Zoe Murphy with her Psycho Brother. Zoe Murphy with her Dead Brother. Zoe Murphy who Killed Her Brother.

Rebecca just nodded. Let out a breath. Dug around in her jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Then she put them away again, and kicked at a can that lay in the street between them.

“You know,” Rebecca murmured at last, “I don’t think that was right. What they did to you. All that harassment and shit.”

Zoe just snorted. “I don’t think anyone with half a brain thinks it was right,” she told her. “My one hope is that years from now they realise what utter assholes they were.”

“I’m sure they will,” Rebecca said. She lifted her head, brushed back her fringe from in front of her eyes. “Does Zulema -”

“No,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “She doesn’t. And I really hope it stays that way.”

Rebecca nodded again. She wasn’t really looking at Zoe. The two of them just stood there, waiting.

Zoe wondered when she would stop being Zoe Murphy.

“Come back inside?” Zoe asked, and Rebecca nodded.

And that was that.

* * *

Sometimes, it felt as though he was watching her.

So sometimes, she talked to him.

Not in a creepy way. Not a full conversation. Just sometimes, she would say that she thought he would like that new show that was coming, or about her professors, or that a new episode of Steven Universe was out, what did he think of it?

Just little ghosts of talks that they used to have, before everything went wrong.

* * *

She went home for Connor’s birthday. It helped that he was born late November, so his birthday that year coincided with Thanksgiving Weekend, so it was easy enough to tell Zulema that was all she going home for.

“I’ll call you!” Zulema had chirped when she had hugged Zoe goodbye, and she had no doubt that she would. “Let me know when you get home!”

“I will,” Zoe promised, hugging her tightly. “I will.”

When she arrived back in her hometown after hours of driving, the first thing she did was go to a flower shop, because her parents had told her to meet them at the cemetery, so they could visit his grave before it got too late/

Lilies were too soft and delicate for Connor. Last year she had gotten a bouquet of carnations, but they didn’t seem right either.

“How about some larkspur?” the florist suggested, and she just nodded, still unsure of if they were really something Connor would have liked.

Did it even matter? It wasn’t like he could throw the flowers at her head or anything.

When she arrived at the cemetery, her mom hugged for nearly a minute, almost crushing the flowers between them. And then her dad hugged her for just as long.

“It’s quiet without you practising all the time,” he told her, and didn’t say anything else.

At the grave, at his grave, at Connor’s grave, they didn’t speak. But she held her mom’s hand after she laid the flowers on her brother’s grave, and she didn’t let go until they were outside again.

Sometimes, it was for the best.

* * *

After everything surrounding the Connor Project happened, her parents took Zoe to counselling.

It was weird, being in her own in a room instead with her family, like how therapy sessions used to be. But it had helped. Nothing seemed to make sense, but Jackie, her counsellor, helped things to seem a little better. So Zoe felt a little better.

It didn’t change anything Connor had done to her. Didn’t change all those times she had hidden from him in fear, the times where he had yelled at her, abused her, made her feel like shit. But she did feel better, now, talking about it.

“You’re allowed to mourn what you didn’t have,” Jackie had told her one session. “You don’t have to mourn him, hell, you can feel relief at the fact he’s not around anymore, but you can mourn the fact that your relationship with him will never have the chance to change.” 

Evan didn’t return to school after everything happened. Not for a while. There was a rumour for a while that he had a mental breakdown and had to be committed, and then a whole new rumour that he had killed himself, but then Jared Kleinman and Alana Beck both said that he was still okay, he was just being homeschooled.

At least, that’s what Zoe heard.

He turned up after Spring Break. He didn’t speak to her until a year later, two weeks before her graduation. 

And so it went.

* * *

That night, she ended up calling Evan Hansen.

“What kind of flowers do you think Connor would have liked?” she asked as soon as he answered. She was lying on her bed in her room, her family’s new cat, a black one named Reece, resting on her stomach.

They couldn’t get a cat before. Connor was allergic to them, but Zoe had caught him leaving tins of food out for strays more than once.

“Flowers?” Evan repeated, and then he went quiet for a moment. “I don’t, uh - I don’t know. He, ah. He didn’t really strike me as a, uh, flower sort of guy.”

“But if you had to choose?”

Evan was quiet for a moment.

“Poppies,” he said.

“Poppies?”

“Poppies.”

Zoe paused. “Is that, like, a thinly veiled drug joke or...?”

“What? No!” Evan yelped. “It’s just - he seemed like a poppy sort of person. That’s all.”

She hummed, stroking Reece as he purred. “Yeah,” she said. “I get that.”

“Yeah,” Evan said. “It’s weird, you know. It’s just - sometimes I feel like I miss him. Even though I never really knew him. Is that - it’s weird, right?”

“No, no,” Zoe said. “No, I get you. I know where you’re coming from.” She was quiet for a moment. “Sometimes it feels like that for me.”

There was a lull for a moment.

“You, uh, you know how I told you that I was going through that list of Connor’s favourite books?” Evan asked, and his voice was quieter now. “I, uh, I don’t know if you’ve read any of them -”

“I haven’t.”

“Right, right, well, uh. A lot of them are to do with brothers and sisters,” he said. “I, uh. Thought you ought to know that.” He paused. “Dinner’s ready now so I have to go. B-But I’ll text you soon.”

“Okay,” Zoe murmured. “Okay. Talk to you later?”

“Talk to you later,” Evan confirmed, and then he ended the call.

Zoe just waited. Closed her eyes and continued to pet Reece.

Maybe she would take Evan to Connor’s grave someday. But now there was dinner waiting for her downstairs, and there was a cat asleep on her stomach, texts from Rebecca and Zulema to be read, college work to be done, parents to watch TV and talk with.

So. Another day, then.

“Hey, Connor?” she said into the empty room. “I’m going to be okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think you ever fully recover from the shock of a death. I think you just adapt.
> 
> I hope you've enjoyed this fic. If you have any questions, like the fic, have feedback or noticed any mistakes, post in the comments below, or at my tumblr [here](http://princedrewwrites.tumblr.com). I'm getting better at using it, I swear! Or, if you just liked the fic and don't want to say anything, just leave a kudos. There's no pressure either way.


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